ECA Update: February 21, 2013
Published: Thu, 02/21/13
McCarthy, Moniz top picks for EPA, DOE
Darren Goode, Politico February 20, 2013 Environmental Protection Agency air chief Gina McCarthy and former Clinton Energy undersecretary Ernest Moniz are still seen as clear favorites to help lead President Barack Obama's energy and environment team, but the official announcements may not be imminent, sources tell POLITICO.
The expectation that Obama will tap McCarthy to lead EPA and Moniz to head the Energy Department hasn't changed for weeks -- and in fact, a limited backlash has already developed for both candidates. Some congressional Republicans are skeptical about McCarthy, while anti-fracking interests are objecting to Moniz because of ties between the petroleum industry and an energy initiative he runs at MIT.
The question is when the White House will finally make its choices official.
According to sources outside the administration and on and off Capitol Hill, the White House isn't expected to announce until Friday at the earliest that McCarthy will be Obama's pick to succeed former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
That follows earlier expectations that she would be announced as Jackson's successor no later than Wednesday. Some signs now are that it won't happen until at least next week.
As for Moniz, the signs are less clear on when Obama may announce the MIT physics professor to succeed outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu. There has been no indication that the White House would plan a joint announcement on the new leaders at EPA and DOE.
Moniz "looks to be further behind" than McCarthy, one industry official said.
But while the timing of the announcements may be fluid, observers have little lingering doubt McCarthy and Moniz are indeed the picks.
Sources on and off the Hill have been emphatic for weeks that key lawmakers and their staff came away from conversations with White House officials with the impression that McCarthy is Obama's choice for EPA.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) also gave a thinly veiled endorsement of McCarthy to reporters early last week.
While speculation surrounding Moniz didn't pick up until late January, observers are saying his selection is just as expected.
"I haven't heard anything different," said one former DOE official when contacted Wednesday. "Moniz wants it and is lobbying hard for the job. Moniz is the odds-on favorite to be nominated this week."
Moniz also lobbied hard for the gig in Obama's first term.
Some sources also don't expect Moniz or McCarthy to have much trouble being confirmed despite some early brushback -- and despite much GOP anger about EPA's regulatory policies in Obama's first term.
McCarthy brings to the table political skills honed through spirited rhetorical battles with Republicans on Capitol Hill over EPA's rules.
She also can tout bipartisan credentials, having worked for former Republican Govs. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and Jodi Rell in Connecticut. "She's just got good common sense and is a consensus builder," said Rich Gold, a former aide to Clinton EPA Administrator Carol Browner and now a partner at the Holland & Knight lobbying shop.
While McCarthy's nomination may need a cloture vote to avoid a GOP filibuster in the Senate, "I don't think it's going to be [a] knocked down, dragged out [fight] or anything," Gold said.
The coal industry wouldn't be happy with the pick, but other industries probably wouldn't fuss much, if at all.
Moniz has gotten praise for having what supporters call a balanced approach to the nation's natural gas boom, leading some on the left to criticize him as soft on the issue of hydraulic fracturing.
MIT's Energy Initiative, which he directs, receives financial backing from several major industry partners like BP and Chevron as a way to fund research aimed at increasing energy production with a lower price in greenhouse gas emissions.
Some on the right say Obama could do a lot worse.
Like Chu, who's a Nobel laureate, Moniz has strong scientific and policy credentials -- but he would probably bring more political chops to the job.
Moniz served under President Bill Clinton as an associate director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and later as undersecretary of energy. In more recent years, Moniz has remained plugged into the department -- he helped engineer the creation of the post of undersecretary of science, served on DOE's blue ribbon commission on nuclear waste and made several trips to Capitol Hill to testify about policy. He also serves on Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Other names that have been floated for Energy secretary have included former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers. Dorgan was a favorite early on, while Ritter is thought to be reluctant to leave Colorado. Rogers would make sense as he was a supporter of Obama's climate change efforts in the president's first term, has hands-on industry experience and is already set to leave the helm at Duke at the end of the year.
Some liberals, such as Center for American Progress Chairman John Podesta, have also been pushing Obama to name California billionaire venture capitalist Tom Steyer to head DOE. Steyer briefly rallied tens of thousands of protesters at Sunday's climate change gathering on the National Mall, urging Obama to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.
Sen. Wyden wants nuclear cleanup commitment from next Energy secretary
Zack Colman, The Hill February 20, 2013 The Senate Energy Committee chairman said Tuesday that any Energy secretary nominee must agree to clean up high-level nuclear waste at a Washington facility to get his support.
Leaks reported last week at the Hanford nuclear reservation require immediate attention, Energy Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. He also expressed concern that a waste treatment plant is behind schedule and over budget.
As Energy Committee Chairman, Wyden will oversee the confirmation hearing for outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu's replacement. He said he would ask nominees to commit to treating and disposing of waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation.
"This should represent an unacceptable threat to the Pacific Northwest for everybody," Wyden said after touring the site, according to The Associated Press. "There are problems that have to be solved, and right now the Department of Energy cannot say what changes are needed, when they will be completed and what they will cost."
DOE manages the nation's waste from nuclear weapons and energy research. Of its $6 billion annual cleanup budget, it spends $2 billion on maintaining Hanford, which straddles Oregon's border along the Columbia River.
Wyden said he would hold a hearing on the Hanford situation, though he did not offer a specific date.
The attention to Hanford -- with which Wyden has a long history -- comes as the chairman and three other senators are hammering out legislation on nuclear waste management.
Wyden, Energy Committee ranking member Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) are working on that bill.
Wyden has said he is willing to separate military spent fuel -- the kind at Hanford -- from civilian, and has explored the idea of sending that military waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, located near Carlsbad, N.M.
He also says he is willing to move some waste near risky areas -- such as fault lines -- to interim storage sites, even without identifying a permanent waste repository.
That take is more aligned with Murkowski than the position held by now-retired Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who chaired the Energy Committee last Congress and was involved in nuclear waste legislation negotiations.
Some senators involved in the talks disagreed with Bingaman's insistence that moving waste to intermediate sites required having an application for a permanent repository filed with DOE.
Wyden's openness to moving at least some nuclear waste to intermediate sites, therefore, could yield progress for the foursome working on the bill.
Still, what works in the Senate might not be true of the House.
The Senate framework would allow states that want to host a permanent waste dump to apply for that distinction. But House Republicans say any nuclear waste management bill would need to label Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent repository, as outlined in a 1982 nuclear waste law.
Such legislation is unlikely to get Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) endorsement. The Yucca repository is unpopular in Nevada, and Reid vehemently opposes it.
Obama, with Reid's backing, ended Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews of a DOE application to use Yucca as the permanent waste site. Republicans called the move illegal, citing the 1982 law.
DNFSB response to Congress on new requirement to consider the "technical and economic feasibility of implementing its recommended measures"
DNFSB Letter February 14, 2013 Dear Chairman Levin and Ranking Member Inhofe:
The Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of Conference accompanying the Conference Report for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 directed the Chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to "... submit a report to the congressional defense committees by February 15,2013, regarding how the DNFSB considers the technical and economic feasibility of
implementing its recommended measures." (Report, p. 394) On behalf of the DNFSB, I am pleased to submit the report appended to this letter in response to the Conference Committee's direction.
See report at link
Wyden backs Manhattan Project National Historical Park Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 20, 2013 U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., pledged support for a Manhattan Project National Historical Park that includes Hanford's B Reactor in his new role as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Re-sources Committee.
The committee has oversight of the National Park Service, making it key to B Reactor's future. "There is an old saying that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it," Wyden said after touring the historic reactor Tuesday.
He'll be working with Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which has House oversight of the park service, and also Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both D-Wash., he said.
Legislation was introduced last year, but failed to pass before the end of the congressional session.
"The last Congress was the first in decades to not pass legislation to protect our special places," Wyden said. "I'm going to work very closely with Chairman Hastings to change that.
"While there are concerns among some in Congress about creating a new national park while the nation struggles to keep up those it already has, Wyden said there may be new ways to attract money for national parks.
He stopped short of endorsing legislation introduced last year in Congress, saying he would have his staff conduct due diligence.
B Reactor was built in 11 months during World War II, when the world's supply of plutonium was about 500 micrograms, enough material to form the head of a single pin.
It was the world's first production-scale reactor, producing plutonium for the world's first nuclear explosion and then the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping to end World War II.
The reactor today looks much like it did during WWII, and 10,000 people toured it last year during the limited days DOE tours were available. Those visitors contributed almost $2 million to the Tri-City-area economy, according to figures cited by DOE to the Tri-Cities Visitor and Convention Bureau.
Visitors could increase 10- or 15-fold in the first year a national park is created, the park service has told DOE.
And visitors also could have a better experience at the reactor.
"The park service would bring its unparalleled ability for storytelling," Colleen French, the DOE government affairs program manager, told Wyden.
The proposed legislation considered last year also would allow donations to be collected to spend on preserving Manhattan Project history, including other Hanford sites, French said. That could include what remains of the early farming communities where residents were forced to leave to make way for the secret nuclear reservation during the war.
As the debate about creating a new national park goes forward, there will be people who say it is a bad idea, Wyden said.
"My own view is that history isn't always ideal and that science can be liberated," he said. "And that what we learn over the years is that it is important to look deep into the well of history to get a clearer understanding of what lies ahead."
Wyden's father, historian Peter Wyden, wrote the book Day One, an account of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and its consequences.
Hanford, along with other Manhattan Project sites in Tennessee and New Mexico, "needs to be preserved so future generations understand what went on here," the senator said.
House Energy Committee presses DOE on nuclear security Zack Colman, The Hill February 15, 2013 The House Energy and Commerce Committee requested an update Friday on Energy Department (DOE) actions to remedy "governance and security culture issues" at the agency's nuclear operations.
In a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the bipartisan group of lawmakers said they still had concerns regarding a July 2012 trespassing incident at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
"Information and assessments reviewed by the Committee following the July 2012 security breakdown ... have identified significant shortcomings in the management of physical security at DOE facilities with Category I and II special nuclear materials," the committee members wrote.
The department, through the National Nuclear Security Administration, is responsible for overseeing the United States' stockpile of nuclear weapons.
An August 2012 DOE Inspector General report found "multiple system failures on several levels" allowed three trespassers who "defaced the building" to approach Y-12 undetected.
The lawmakers requested information on how the DOE was addressing security issues at nuclear facilities. The committee is planning a March 13 Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing on the subject.
Letter signatories include full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Oversight and Investigations subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and subcommittee Vice Chairman Michael Burgess (R-Texas).
How the Continuing Resolution Got Pegged to March 4 Tim Alberta and Stacy Kaper, National Journal February 20, 2013 The House will not take up a continuing resolution to keep the government funded before the week of March 4, but how it came to that starting date is the subject of some debate.
A small faction of House conservatives is quietly claiming credit for persuading Republican leadership to postpone any action on the CR until after sequestration kicks in March 1. They say that their aim was to make sure the CR reflected the lower spending level achieved by the automatic spending cuts.
According to one House Republican aide, roughly a dozen conservative members huddled late last week to discuss the timing of a new CR. One member in that meeting expressed concern that leadership wanted to pass a CR with pre-sequester spending levels and would simply count on the sequester to automatically reduce those figures.
While there was some confusion about the mechanics of that plan, there was unified opposition to the idea of passing a CR with pre-sequester expenditure limits. Conservative members emerged from that meeting convinced that the only way to lock in the post-sequester spending levels would be to vote on the new CR after March 1, and they successfully pleaded their case to leadership soon thereafter.
Hogwash, according to several senior House GOP leadership aides, one of whom called this a case of conservatives and their allied think tanks claiming victory against the establishment in a battle that never was fought.
"There was never a disagreement," that aide said.
This recollective disconnect is reflective of the fragile partnership between House Republican leadership and the conservative rank and file, many of whom are seemingly anticipating a moment of ideological betrayal after the internecine battles of the last Congress. Whether these warring accounts of the CR rollout represent a simple miscommunication or something more serious remains to be seen. What's clear is that Republicans always intended for the CR to reflect the post-sequester spending levels. And if advancing the bill after March 1 makes some conference members more comfortable, so be it.
Obama to press GOP on sequester deal as deadline approaches Justin Sink, The Hill February 19, 2013 President Obama will look to ratchet up pressure on congressional Republicans to strike a deal averting the sequester with an event Tuesday highlighting the impact of the $85 billion in cuts on the nation's first-responders.
Obama, returning from a vacation with just 10 days before the March 1 deadline when the across-the-board cuts are triggered, is scheduled to speak at 10:45 a.m. at the White House.
According to an administration official, he will be joined at the event by emergency management personnel who could face furloughs or layoffs if the sequester takes place.
Negotiations to avert the sequester -- which will hit both the Pentagon and non-defense discretionary spending -- have reached an impasse, with both sides more focused on avoiding blame for the looming cuts than preventing them.
Republicans have said they will only agree to a plan that fully replaces the sequester with other, targeted spending cuts. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, passed a bill endorsed by the White House that evenly balances future spending cuts with new tax revenues created by closing loopholes and deductions for the wealthiest Americans.
According to a White House official, Obama hopes to aggressively pressure congressional Republicans, depicting the choice over the sequester as one between protecting healthcare and national defense or protecting tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans.
"With less than two weeks before these cuts hit, the President will challenge Republicans to make a very simple choice: do they protect investments in education, healthcare and national defense, or do they continue to prioritize and protect tax loopholes that benefit the very few at the expense of middle- and working-class Americans?" the White House official said.
Central to that effort, the president will seek to highlight instances of how the sequester could affect ordinary taxpayers. The president is expected to note that if the sequester is triggered, grants for firefighters and state and local emergency management personnel will be slashed. Moreover, he will continue to use his bully pulpit to argue that implementation could wipe out the fragile economic recovery.
Tuesday's address is only the latest effort by the president to turn public opinion against the spending cuts and set Republicans up to take the blame if the sequester goes into effect.
In his State of the Union address last week and in speeches across the nation, Obama has pressed GOP lawmakers to agree to a "balanced" approach with cuts and revenues to replace the sequester.
Both sides, though, are digging in their heels, with little time left to reach an accord.
Republicans argue that Democrats must rein in the nation's deficit to stabilize the economy, and see the sequester as an opportunity to reduce government spending. GOP leaders also argue that having allowed higher revenues in January's "fiscal cliff" agreement, the focus should now be on spending cuts.
"Americans do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes," Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said earlier this month, pledging to oppose legislation that called for more revenues.
House Republicans have also made a concerted effort to remind voters that it was the Obama administration that originally suggested the idea of the sequester during negotiations over the debt ceiling. GOP leaders have repeatedly underscored that fact in press briefings, and conservative social media accounts refer to the looming cuts as the "Obamaquester."
Democrats, though, led by the president are hopeful pressure from the public and business groups, which are wary of economic uncertainty, will bring the GOP back to the table.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday predicted the pressure would work, saying that Democrats held "the high ground both substantively and politically" in the debate over the sequester.
"Republicans will come on board. They have no choice," he added.
With neither side seemingly ready to blink, many in Washington are predicting that the budget cuts will at least temporarily go into effect -- casting potential chaos on departmental budgets and the economy as a whole. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that implementation of the sequester could reduce hiring by three-quarters of a million Americans through 2013, and slow economic growth across the board.
"It's pretty clear to me that the sequester is going to go into effect," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week. "I see no evidence that the House plans to act on this matter before the end of the month."
McConnell, who has helped shepherd through last-minute deals in recent battles over the debt ceiling and the fiscal cliff, has also said that he does not expect to play a similar role this time around.
"Read my lips: I am not interested in an eleventh-hour negotiation," McConnell said.
Single-shell tank at Hanford found to be leaking waste Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 16, 2013 An underground single-shell tank at Hanford is leaking up to 300 gallons of radioactive waste a year, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.
"I am alarmed and deeply concerned by this news," Inslee said in a press conference. "This is a problem we thought was under control."
Tank T-111 is the first of Hanford's 149 single-shell tanks to apparently leak since pumpable liquids were removed from the last of those tanks in 2004. As many as 67 of the tanks are believed to have leaked in the past.
The tanks contain a mix of high-level radioactive and hazardous chemical waste left from chemically processing fuel irradiated at Hanford reactors to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. "Washington state has a zero tolerance policy on radioactive leaks," the governor said. "We will not tolerate any leaks of this material into our environment.
"The state is willing to take legal action if needed, but that will not be necessary if Congress does its job and meets the nation's legal and moral obligation to clean up Hanford, he said.
The Department of Energy said Friday that liquid levels are decreasing in Hanford Tank T-111 at an estimated rate of 150 to 300 gallons a year, or a half gallon to a gallon a day. Although the most likely cause is a leak, DOE Hanford officials have not confirmed that. DOE said it still is determining the specific cause.
There is no immediate risk to the public, Inslee said. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive waste have leaked from Hanford's underground tanks in the past.
Some of that contamination has reached the groundwater in central Hanford, but any movement of the contaminated groundwater toward the Columbia River is slow, according to DOE and the state, which is a Hanford regulator.
But the state is concerned about not just Tank T-111, but the condition of other single-shell tanks used to hold waste from the past production of plutonium. Tank T-111 was one of 64 tanks built in 1943 and 1944."This is one leaker, but we have got a bunch of old tanks out there," Inslee said.
A legacy of leaks
Evidence suggests this leak at Tank T-111 may have been going on for several years, Inslee said.
Previous leaks were identified in 1979 and again in 1994, with an estimated loss of less than 1,000 gallons of waste, said Cheryl Whalen, cleanup section manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology.
In 1995 pumpable liquids were removed, but about 38,000 gallons of liquid remained among the solids in the tank. The tank has a 530,000 gallon capacity and 447,000 gallons of waste remained. DOE described the remaining sludge, a mixture of solids and liquids, as having a mud-like consistency.
Last year an assessment of routine measurements in Hanford's single-shell tanks found that the level of waste might be slowly rising in 52 tanks. DOE has been inserting video cameras into the enclosed underground tanks to inspect for potential sources of water intrusion, particularly from rainfall and snow melt.
Those inspections helped find the suspected leak in Tank T-111.By January, three tanks had been inspected. DOE found a slow drip into one of the tanks from a concrete drain pit that may be adding up to 200 gallons of water a year. Underground concrete pits covered with removable concrete blocks were used when waste was being moved into or among tanks when Hanford still was producing plutonium.
Tank T-111 was the fourth tank inspected, and possible evidence was found that water had leaked into the tank in the past. Water leaking into the tank may have masked the liquid waste leaking out into the soil, Inslee said.
In November and December, the waste level in the tank fell below the normal range.
Measuring the level of waste in tanks can be difficult, because they are so large that a change of even a couple of hundred gallons of waste can be difficult to detect. The levels can fluctuate as air pockets build up or dissipate. And the top of the waste can have peaks and valleys, which can make measurements vary.
DOE is working to empty the single-shell tanks of the sludge and salt cake that remains. The waste is being transferred into newer double-shell tanks for storage until the vitrification plant starts operating to glassify the waste for disposal. The plant is required to begin operating in 2019.DOE believes it has emptied 10 of 149 single-shell tanks to regulatory standards. Work is concentrated now on the C Tank Farm, where DOE must meet a court-enforced consent decree to have all 16 tanks emptied by September 2014. No work has been done to empty solids from any of the 16 tanks in the group called T Tank Farm, which includes Tank T-111.Work to design, fabricate and install systems to remove waste from a tank can take more than a year.
Multiple challenges
Energy Secretary Steven Chu called Inslee on Friday about Tank T-111. They plan to meet next week about the response.
The state needs to send a clear message to Congress that even in this time of tight federal budgets, the state of Washington will not let the federal government waver in the commitment to clean up Hanford, Inslee said.
"With an active leak of high-level waste into the environment, money cannot be allowed to be an excuse for inaction," he said. "The proposed sequestration we are facing could not come at a worse time."
Earlier this week, House Appropriations Committee Democrats said automatic federal budget cuts known as "sequestration" could lead to a slowdown in emptying Hanford's single-shell tanks after March 1 and six weeks of unpaid leave for 1,000 Hanford workers.
Hanford has multiple challenges, including the vitrification plant and its double-shell tank farms, Inslee said. DOE has said technical issues that must be resolved at the vit plant have put legal deadlines at risk of not being met and could increase costs. In October, DOE confirmed that it had found its first leak from the inner shell of an underground double-shell tank.
Inslee said at the end of January that more double-shell tanks must be built. More storage space is needed -- not only because of the double-shell tank leak, but also because tanks will be needed to prepare waste for treatment at the vitrification plant.
The leak announced Friday adds to the storage need, he said.
"We are not going to allow ourselves to be trapped into a dead end of arguing about prioritizing these challenges," he said. "We will not allow the federal government to play the single-shell problem off against the vitrification plant. Both need to proceed on an accelerated schedule.
"The Tank T-111 leak is a wakeup call to the federal government to redouble its Hanford cleanup efforts, he said.
"I have met with my legal team and asked them to develop new legal options to enforce the U.S Department of Energy's current obligations to clean up Hanford," Bob Ferguson, the new Washington attorney general, said in a statement.
More video inspections
DOE will continue to monitor the waste in Tank T-111. Monitoring wells in the T Tank Farm have not identified significant changes in concentrations of chemicals or radionuclides in the soil, according to DOE.
Plans made before the issue with Tank T-111 was discovered call for video inspections of eight more single-shell tanks this year because of concerns about water getting into the tanks. DOE also does routine monitoring for leaks from tanks.
DOE has taken steps to prevent tank waste that has leaked in central Hanford from reaching the Columbia River.
The largest groundwater treatment system in the DOE environmental cleanup complex started treating contaminated groundwater in central Hanford last year, removing several radioactive and chemical contaminants. The groundwater there is contaminated by chemical processing facilities and tank leaks.
Contaminated water is pumped out of the ground by a system of wells that can be expanded or moved if conditions change, such as if new sources of contamination are found.
In addition, DOE finished installing a 70,000-square-foot cap of dirt and plastic over part of the T Tank Farm in 2008. It's meant to stop rain and snow melt from spreading contamination deeper into the soil, at least until cleanup decisions are made for contaminated soil there.
The cap's main purpose is to stop the spread of contamination from Tank T-106, which is believed to have previously leaked 115,000 gallons of waste into the soil. However, the cap also extends over a portion of Tank T-111.
Senate Energy Committee Chairman Ron Wyden tours troubled Hanford nuclear reservation Associated Press February 19, 2013 RICHLAND, Wash. -- The nation's most contaminated nuclear site -- and the challenges associated with ridding it of its toxic legacy -- will be a subject of upcoming hearings and a higher priority in Washington D.C., a key lawmaker said Tuesday.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, whose home state neighbors the Hanford nuclear reservation in south-central Washington, said he was troubled by news last week that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking and concerned that a long-planned plant to treat that waste is behind schedule and over budget.
"This should represent an unacceptable threat to the Pacific Northwest for everybody," Wyden said after touring the site. "There are problems that have to be solved, and right now the Department of Energy cannot say what changes are needed, when they will be completed and what they will cost.
Wyden, who has long been a proponent of Hanford cleanup, is the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will conduct confirmation hearings for the person nominated to replace outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
Wyden said he would use those hearings to secure a commitment to finally treat and safely dispose of all radioactive waste at Hanford.
The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup -- one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. And cleanup is expected to last decades.
Central to cleanup is construction of a plant to convert millions of gallons of waste -- a toxic, radioactive stew stored in 177 underground tanks -- into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The $12.3 billion plant is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule.
In addition, tanks are already long past their intended 20-year life span. Many are already known to have leaked in the past, and last week, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a single-shell tank could be leaking in the range of 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers.
The Energy Department said it is still unable to determine why liquid levels in the tank are declining, saying it is still investigating the problem.
Monitoring wells around the tank have not detected higher radioactivity levels, said Ben Harp, an Energy Department manager at the site, though contaminants would not be expected to have reached those wells yet.
Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber have championed building additional tanks to ensure safe storage of the waste until the plant is completed. Wyden said he shares their concerns about the integrity of the tanks, but that he wants more scientific information to determine it's the correct way to spend scarce money.
It's not as if there haven't been successes with Hanford cleanup over the years. Two of three tasks that were identified as urgent to protect public safety and the environment have been completed, and plans are being made for shrinking the overall footprint of the Hanford site and eventually opening up some areas to recreation and development.
Wyden's tour included stops at two so-called tank farms, including one where the suspected leaking tank is located, a plant to treat contaminated groundwater, and the construction site for the waste treatment plant.
His first stop: Hanford's B Reactor, which produced plutonium for the first atomic blast, the Trinity Test, and for the Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, effectively ending World War II. B Reactor has been designated a National Historic Landmark and legislation has been submitted to recognize it as part of a new national park recognizing Manhattan Project sites.
Anti-nuclear activists have called the plan an expensive glorification of an ugly chapter in history, but Wyden expressed his support for the idea.
"History isn't always ideal, and science can be liberating," he said, adding later, "If you forget about history, you're condemned to repeat it."
Hanford lab analyzes precious samples of highly radioactive waste Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 18, 2013 Hanford's 222-S Laboratory, where some of the nation's most hazardous radioactive material is handled and analyzed, is a mix of contradictions.
Its primary job is to analyze samples of waste left from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program.
But once a sample of waste is collected from Hanford's underground tanks holding 56 million gallons of radioactive waste, it becomes precious material.
"These are very important, very valuable samples," said Dan Hansen, the lab operations manager for Department of Energy contractor Advanced Technologies and Laboratories, or ATL.
The central Hanford lab is old, dating from 1951 when it was the process lab supporting the REDOX plutonium separations plant. But it has the newest large hot cells in the Department of Energy complex and DOE plans to use the lab for decades to come.
With work at Hanford now focused on environmental cleanup, the lab is one of only two operating nuclear facilities at the site.
And it is the only continuously operating nuclear facility. The other, the 242-A Evaporator, operates only periodically to reduce the amount of liquid waste in some of the tanks to make more space available.
In 70,000 square feet managed by DOE contractor Washington River Protection Solutions, ATL performs about 25,000 inorganic, organic and radionuclide analyses a year at the 222-S Laboratory.
Samples can be very small, almost forensic, like a wipe of difficult-to-reach material between the shells of one of Hanford's underground double-shell tanks. Or they can be large, like the multiple 19-inch-long core samples taken from the sludge and salts in Hanford's underground tanks. Grab samples of liquid waste also are collected by lowering a jar into an underground tank and then loading it into pigs -- heavy shielded metal containers -- for the trip to the lab. Like all highly radioactive samples shipped to or from the lab, they're packaged like Russian nesting dolls, with containers within containers within containers.
"We bring large bulk containers into this facility and break it down into smaller volumes," said Rob Schroeder, an ATL manager. "We reduce exposure to workers."
The small samples can be analyzed in laboratories under fume hoods rather than inside hot cells.
Work to prepare highly radioactive samples taken from the tanks starts in an addition added to the laboratory complex in 1994, which includes two, 12-foot by 12-foot hot cells. The 11 hot cells at the 222-S Laboratory also are used for tasks that include testing equipment that will be used at the lab in the vitrification plant under construction using radioactive waste rather than a nonradioactive waste simulant.
Samples of waste are loaded through small portholes and workers standing outside the shielded glass windows of the hot cells use controls to maneuver manipulators to grasp and pick up items inside the hot cells.
On a recent day, David Jackson, an ATL chemical technician, was doing some housekeeping, using a manipulator to wash beakers a couple of inches high that had been used for pH tests. Stacked nearby in the hot cell were crates of glass jars topped with blue lids holding other waste samples. The longer they've been stored, the darker the glass -- discolored by radiation.
Collecting a sample of high-level radioactive waste from the tank farms, where workers don't have the benefit of hot cells, can cost tens of millions of dollars, said Jou Hwang, ATL president. They're stored in case more testing is needed.
Once a year each jar is reweighed and lids made brittle by radiation are replaced.
The equipment in the hot cell must survive the same harsh conditions.
"The challenge with electronic devices in the hot cell is they deteriorate fairly fast because of radiation," Hwang said.
Repackaged samples are taken to the analytical laboratory, where their small size reduces radiation exposure. In addition, the classic radiation protections of time, distance and shielding are relied upon to protect workers.
Work is done as quickly as possible and half-ounce samples are packaged in tungsten carriers weighing about eight pounds to provide shielding.
Workers leave at least 4.5 inches of distance between themselves and samples, using tools such as custom-designed cap removers, tongs and pipettes to do work. Samples may be moved around the laboratory in classic Red Flyer children's wagons to add distance between them and workers. Employees working with the samples under the hoods wear dosimeter finger rings to monitor radiation.
The samples may be analyzed to make decisions such as whether the contents of two underground tanks may be safely combined and to keep waste in tanks in a safe condition, Schroeder said.
"It's not like C.S.I.," Hansen said. There is no computerized equipment that instantly characterizes samples.
Instead, samples may be dissolved or bathed in an extraction fluid and then analyzed, using any of an array of spectrometers and other equipment. The 222-S Lab has more than 100 pieces of analytical equipment and 156 fume hoods.
Although the laboratory dates to 1951, Washington River Protection Solutions invested $30 million in Recovery Act money into upgrades. Although now a major use of the lab is to analyze waste to safely manage stored waste, in the future it will be needed to make sure the waste meets the chemical, physical and radiological requirements to be treated at the vitrification plant.
Improvements have included a new storage facility, a new administration building, new instruments, an improved ventilation system and replacing the old steam-heat system with electrical heat, providing better conditions for delicate and sensitive instruments.
The computer network that used a DOS operating system was upgraded, along with an analytical system that would not operate with a modern computing system. When all 56 million gallons of radioactive waste are removed from underground tanks and treated in an estimated four decades from now, the lab still will be operating, under current plans. "This will be the last facility operating standing," Hwang said. It will be used not only to support work at the vitrification plant, but also may be used to decommission the vitrification plant.
Too much is at stake to throw MOX nuclear project into jeopardy Clint Wolfe, Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness February 17, 2013 In recent weeks, critics of the National Nuclear Security Administration's nuclear nonproliferation project have been repeating criticisms that are not worthy of an enlightened discussion of the merits of the program.
A $6.8 billion mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel plant is under construction at Savannah River Site. The fuel is a key part of a plutonium disposition agreement between the U.S. and Russia to eliminate 34 metric tons of plutonium each from their respective nuclear weapons stockpiles.
MIXING PLUTONIUM oxide with uranium oxide produces MOX fuel that can generate clean electricity in a nuclear power plant. The United States and Russia agreed to this technology after thorough evaluation of other methods of plutonium disposition. Every option would have cost billions of dollars to implement and cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually to provide surveillance, inspection, and security forever - all except one - MOX.
Use of plutonium in MOX fuel changes it in a way that makes it unattractive for nuclear weapons, so the plutonium is not just buried, immobilized or stored - it is eliminated from use in weapons.
Critics, such as Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., say the fuel is dangerous, that the government has no customers for it, and that the project will cost more than estimated.
Let's address these one at a time.
The fuel is not dangerous. MOX has been used in more than 30 reactors worldwide for decades and more reactors are being planned to use it. The claim that the fuel is dangerous apparently is linked to paranoia concerning plutonium in general, and completely ignores the safe operating history of MOX fuel.
As for lack of customers, this assertion is way too early to claim, and ignores the purpose of this project,which is to eliminate plutonium, not make money. Obviously, if the nation can realize some cost recovery that would be a bonus, but the real prize is the elimination of the plutonium both in the United States and Russia. There will be customers for the fuel in the long run even if the government uses it for its own purposes.
RECENTLY, AN NNSA official told a Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness breakfast gathering of more than 100 people that negotiations are intensifying with at least two different utilities. There is also the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has expressed interest in burning MOX fuel in its reactors.
As for the concern that the project will cost more than estimated, that is a virtual certainty. There are a number of reasons for this, many of which are related to the 30-year hiatus in nuclear construction in this country. Rather than speculate, we can assume that the costs of the MOX project would increase at least as much as similar non-nuclear projects over the same time period.
THERE WERE three construction projects associated with this program - the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MOFFF); a Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF); and a Waste Solidification Building. Since 2005, the Handy-Whitman index of utility construction projects in the southeastern United States shows costs increasing by about one-third. Some components, such as electrical equipment and transformers, have greatly increased by approximately 72 percent and 45 percent, respectively, over the same period.
The budget challenges are described in President Obama's 2013 budget request to Congress, which identified several "significant challenges" to constructing the MOX plant because of unexpected market and economic conditions. Over the years through several reviews, NNSA has reported to Congress that project reserves have been used to make up for funding shortfalls.
As a result of these issues, and because of a dated budget baseline first written in 2005, the contractor has been asked to recalculate a new budget baseline based on risk management and current market prices and conditions. While this will project an increase in the overall cost of the MOX project, it will reflect a more accurate cost accounting and estimation of the project. For example, in 2005, diesel fuel was $1.35 a gallon. In 2012, diesel fuel was more than $4 a gallon, an astounding increase in cost. This raises the cost of everything, including materials, transportation and fabrication.
HOWEVER, THE government has an alternate concept it is pursuing called a "preferred alternative," which eliminates the need for the PDCF and instead modifies existing facilities to provide plutonium in the appropriate form to the MOFFF. This has the potential to lower the final cost of the program by a significant amount.
In any event, it is reckless and foolish to talk about terminating the program because of costs since the facility is more that 60 percent complete. It will cost a lot less to finish than to start over on another multibillion-dollar program that can't really eliminate the plutonium threat the way that MOX can. Russia currently is ahead of us in progress toward eliminating their plutonium, but it has made it clear that it will not eliminate its stockpile until America is ready to do likewise. The programs are, therefore, inextricably linked.
ON DEC, 3, 2012, barely two months ago, President Obama gave a talk at the National War College in Washington, D.C. His remarks were delivered on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Nunn-Lugar initiative, which the president called one of the smartest and most successful national security programs.
He lauded the visionary leadership of the two former senators, Nunn, D-Ga., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind. (Yes, in those days it was OK for members of opposite parties to work together for the good of the country.) He urged the nation to be vigilant with regard to the nonproliferation theme of Nunn-Lugar and to continue to invest in people and technology: "We have to sustain the partnerships we have, and that includes Russia." The president also said, "It took decades - and extraordinary sums of money - to build those arsenals. It's going to take decades - and continued investments - to dismantle them."
The president is right. Rep. Markey is wrong.
Poll: Americans support nuclear energy, building new nuclear plants Electric Light & Power February 20, 2013 A majority of Americans continues to hold favorable views of nuclear energy and believes that electric companies should prepare now for new nuclear power plants to be built.
More than 80 percent of the survey respondents give reliability, affordability and clean air top importance for electricity production, and three-fifths strongly associate nuclear energy with those attributes.
In a national telephone survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, 68 percent said they favor nuclear power, up from 65 percent in September 2012, while 29 percent opposed. Those strongly favoring nuclear energy outweigh those strongly opposed by more than a two-to-one ratio, 29 percent versus 13 percent.
The survey was conducted Feb. 8-10 by Bisconti Research Inc., with GfK Roper, and includes some questions trending back 30 years. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
"The survey found double-digit increases since 2012 in Americans who strongly associate nuclear energy with clean air and seven other attributes, and these changing perceptions pushed overall favorability up near historical peak levels," said Ann Bisconti, president of Bisconti Research.
Seventy-three percent of respondents believe that nuclear plants operating in the U.S. are safe and secure, with 24 percent thinking they are not. Also, 65 percent believe that "nuclear power plants in this area are able to withstand the most extreme natural events that may occur here."
The new survey shows that 81 percent of the respondents see nuclear as a key provider of electricity, up from 77 percent last September
Eighty-one percent of the respondents also agree with renewing the operating licenses of nuclear power plants as long as they continue to meet federal safety standards.
Climate change has re-emerged as a frequently discussed policy topic in Washington, and 55 percent of the public give climate change top importance as a consideration in electricity production. Only 40 percent strongly associate nuclear energy as a climate change solution, even though nuclear energy facilities produce 63 percent of the nation's carbon-free electricity.
The majority support for nuclear energy extends over a number of metrics:
With 71 new reactors under construction worldwide and nearly 200 others planned, 75 percent agree that as countries around the world build new nuclear power plants, the U.S. nuclear industry should play a leading role in world markets.
In addition to the strong majority support for various aspects of nuclear energy, the support extends across gender and political population groups. Those who favor nuclear energy include 64 percent of women, 72 percent of men, 64 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of independents.
Consistent with recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on used nuclear fuel management, 77 percent of the survey respondents believe the U.S. should "retool" its program for managing spent nuclear fuel rods to focus on consolidating the fuel rods at storage centers while the nation develops a permanent disposal facility. At the same time, 61 percent agree that spent nuclear fuel rods are safely stored at nuclear plant sites; 28 percent disagree.
Nuclear power facilities operating in 31 states provide electricity to one of every five U.S. homes and businesses.
Former Yucca Mountain Chief Questions Nuclear Waste Effort Jeff McMahon, Forbes February 18, 2013 A hydrogeologist who oversaw the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site says the government's new "consent-based" search for waste depositories doesn't go far enough.
Even when communities consent to host a depository, formidable obstacles remain--and the U.S. knows this--said former Yucca Mountain chief William Alley and his wife and co-author Rosemarie Alley, writing in New Scientist this morning. William Alley served as Chief of the Office of Groundwater for the USGS for almost two decades and oversaw the Yucca Mountain project from 2002 to 2010.
"The US recently announced its own volunteer-based policy, including promises to have an interim storage site up and running within eight years and a repository by 2048. It should know better. Is it forgetting its own track record, even with interim storage facilities?"
Last month the Department of Energy launched a 35-year search for a new permanent waste depository, with interim depositories to open in as little as eight years. In its plan the DOE emphasized a "consent-based approach" in which local governments could volunteer sites. But the U.S. has already seen consent-based depository proposals fail.
In the 1980s, Oak Ridge, Tenn. agreed to host an interim facility, Alley says. In the 90s, the Skull Valley Band Of The Goshute Nation volunteered sovereign land in Utah. And recently Nevada's Nye County wrote to Energy Sec. Steven Chu offering its consent, hoping to revive the abandoned Yucca Mountain site. In all three cases, statewide opposition trumped local consent.
In 2012 Forbes featured the story of Carlsbad, New Mexico's willingness to accept atomic waste.
"It's now over half a century since the dawn of nuclear energy and dangerous and long-lived waste continues to pile up all over the globe. Something needs to be done," the Alleys write. "Although touted as the solution, finding a consenting community is merely the first step. The harder part is getting everyone else to sign on."
The U.S. and U.K. hope to solve their nuclear waste problem by emulating the consent-based approach that resulted in new depositories expected to open in Sweden and Finland. But strong anti-nuclear groups often can martial opposition at the state level, preventing the transportation of waste to a consenting site. And the geologic analysis of a site can take decades, during which scientific and political surprises are likely to occur, Alley says.
"Here, the public needs an independent, technically savvy group whom they trust to address their concerns and interpret the scientific results."
Although William Alley stepped down as the head of the Yucca Mountain project in 2010, the year Congress and the Obama Administration withdrew its funding, the Alleys still have a horse in this race. They co-authored a book "Too Hot To Touch: The Problem of Nuclear Waste" just out from Cambridge University Press.
Why Japan Can't Quit Nuclear Power Olga Belegolova, National Journal February 14, 2013 TOKYO--Hiroko Sata, an 87-year-old nurse, walked out into the Tokyo street on Nov. 11 to see about the commotion. To her left, more than 1,000 people were banging drums and shouting slogans. "What in the world is going on there?" she asked me and my translator, grimacing at the disturbance. The protesters, we told her, had gathered in front of the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Co. to commemorate the 20-month anniversary of the disastrous triple-meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March 2011.
Sata, who is older than Japan's nearly 60-year-old civilian nuclear industry, remembers a time without nuclear power. Families were allowed just a few lightbulbs in the 1940s, because the electrical system was still in its infancy. "There was a TEPCO office in the neighborhood," she recalls, and when a bulb burned out, "we had to bring it there" to trade it for a new one. The advent of nuclear power meant that the Japanese could consume as much electricity as they wanted.
Now, behind Sata, the protesters are chanting, "Stop nukes immediately!" and "Shame on you, TEPCO!" Mostly middle-aged, they are braving the rain to crowd in front of TEPCO and other government agencies, including the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry, where an antinuclear tent flaps permanently in the wind. All of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors except two were idled after the Fukushima disaster, and protesters do not want them reopened.
Fukushima filled the streets with people. An antinuclear demonstration in Tokyo last July turned out 170,000, larger even than the 1960s protests against a security treaty with the United States. After the earthquake and tsunami that caused the 2011 meltdown, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Tokyo--and thousands more assembled elsewhere across Japan--to demand a permanent shutdown of the nation's nuclear plants. The antinuclear movement had previously been an insignificant collection of Cassandra-like students, but now demonstrations regularly rack Japan's cities. In Fukushima, they gather weekly.
Sata regards the crowd. Then she points to the brightly lit high-rise next to her. "If we don't have the nuclear plants, how is it going to work without electricity?" This is not some false dichotomy dreamed up by an old-timer who remembers a world without much light. Sata may be right: Japan lacks alternate sources of energy that are plentiful and cheap. After 60 years of dependence, the country is economically, historically, and culturally handcuffed to the atom. It has no ready remedy, and even the long-term fixes could break the Japanese economy.
Which may explain why, just a month after the November protest, Japanese voters elected as prime minister Shinzo Abe, who is more open to restarting Japan's stalled nuclear industry than his predecessor. The election represents a choice that Japan and many other countries have made and will keep making: immediate economic security over long-term safety and environmental concerns. The energy source may vary--in Japan it's nuclear power, but in the United States it's fossil fuels, and in the Persian Gulf it's oil--but the choice is the same. Call it the myopia of power.
THE ATOM RISES
In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his "Atoms for Peace" address at the United Nations, arguing that nukes needn't be used only for war. But the next year, a U.S. hydrogen-bomb test near the Pacific's Marshall Islands almost derailed those plans. The nuclear fallout reached a Japanese tuna fishing boat, exposing 23 fishermen and their catch. Many of the crew were hospitalized, and the vessel's radio operator died several months later. The tragedy--and subsequent fears of contaminated fish entering the market--spurred protests in Japan. Suddenly, "Atoms for Peace" was in danger.
So the Defense Department decided that the U.S. government should build a nuclear reactor in Japan. "A vigorous offensive on the nonwar uses of atomic energy would appear to be a timely and effective way of countering [Russia's nuclear-weapons program] and minimizing the harm already done in Japan," declared a Pentagon memo at the time. Civilian nuclear power became the best way to change the subject and cast Washington as the benevolent hegemon. "Now, while the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain so vivid, construction of such a power plant in a country like Japan would be a dramatic and Christian gesture which could lift all of us far above the recollection of the carnage of those cities," U.S. Atomic Energy Commissioner Thomas Murray said in a major policy address in 1954. It was the first time a U.S. nuclear policymaker had publicly floated the idea of building a reactor in Japan.
At first, antinuclear sentiment in Japan was strong. By the end of that year, 34 million people--more than half of eligible Japanese voters--had signed a petition in favor of banning nuclear weapons. But the United States and a few prominent Japanese supporters were determined to sell the peaceful atom to Japan, separating military concerns from energy. Media mogul Matsutarō Shōriki used his newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, to advance the cause. (One rumor held that he was a CIA agent.) The newspaper, along with the U.S. Embassy, cosponsored an exhibit welcoming the atom back to Japan that regularly attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors, even in Hiroshima, as it traveled around the country. By the beginning of 1956, the pendulum of Japanese public opinion had swung in the other direction, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
At the same time, a comic-strip character who debuted in 1952 was also becoming popular. Astro Boy, who is known in Japan as Atom, was a nuclear-powered android with a sister named Uran, the local diminutive for uranium. (The creator, Osamu Tezuka, is often described as the godfather of Japanese animation.) In the opening credits for the popular 1963 TV cartoon inspired by Astro Boy, a young, wide-eyed boy literally pops out of a mushroom cloud. He flexes his muscles and shoots into the air, passing through a stormy sky, waving to a commercial airliner, swooshing over dolphins in the ocean, and flying alongside a fast-moving train, all while cheerful music plays and people look on in awe. Astro Boy has remained popular in Japan since the 1950s, appearing in animated television shows, video games, and a feature film adaptation of the comic.
Astro Boy was the cultural expression of a broader shift: Across Japan, attitudes about nuclear energy were changing. In 1954, Japan budgeted 230 million yen for nuclear energy; the first commercial nuclear-power plant opened in the Ibaraki prefecture in 1966. Other reactors soon followed. By 1973, five reactors were up and running, but 72 percent of Japan's energy still came from oil. Then the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed a worldwide oil embargo and prices soared, pushing the island nation even further toward nuclear power as a means to energy independence. Before the Fukushima meltdown, Japan was down to getting just 63 percent of its energy from fossil fuels, with 30 percent coming from nuclear power. (By contrast, the United States gets 19 percent of its power from nukes.)
Traveling around Japan to get a sense of how ordinary folks felt about nuclear power, I met Tomie Ishikawa, 90, who told me an extraordinary story. In 1985, the government approved the construction of a uranium-enrichment and spent-fuel-reprocessing facility in Rokkasho, her village, boosting a poor backwater with government subsidies and jobs. So in 1995, Ishikawa and two friends started a women's reading club--not to discuss the latest novels, but to educate its members about the benefits and hazards of nuclear energy. "We studied what is bad and what is good," recalls Haruko Nihonyanagi, 88, the chairwoman of the 25-person group who has lived in Rokkasho since 1945.
Nihonyanagi remembers the tense debate among the villagers when the nuclear facilities first opened. "At that time, there was such a big moment, a big dispute," she recalls. "We didn't know what the correct idea was.... We also needed to study: What is nuclear power? What is radiation?" Now Nihonyanagi and her friends are fluent policy wonks on the issue. They visited the devastated Fukushima area after the accident and talked to the panicked people there. "I kind of understand how they feel, because they haven't studied [nuclear power], so they don't have the knowledge," Nihonyanagi says. She will stand up for nuclear power because Japan still needs it. "If ... this new renewable energy can support all the Japanese electricity supplies, that would be fine, but at this moment, the renewable energy can support only a few percent of the whole electric consumption."
Ishikawa prefers the ecological case. "I don't think we can shut down the nuclear power, especially when we consider global warming," she says. Becoming more dependent on fossil fuels would make the country that birthed the world's first climate pact, the Kyoto Protocol, scale back its emissions-reduction commitments. "Now this tiny [uranium] pellet can supply the electricity for half of a year.... Of course, this kind of very convenient and very precious things comes together with a bit of risk."
CYCLE OF DEPENDENCE
The Rokkasho plant, which stretches for miles, covers the nuclear power cycle from start to finish--from enrichment to reprocessing of spent fuel for reuse. The visitor center, a tall green gherkin-esque building, makes the reprocessing facility seem like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, where women dressed like flight attendants smile as they cheerfully walk visitors through interactive demonstrations of how plutonium is extracted from spent fuel and converted into a plutonium-uranium mixture to be used for next-generation reactors. But the rest of the complex and its village home show just how conjoined Japan's security and economy are with nuclear power. Even if the country wanted to step away from nuclear energy, it just can't.
Beyond the avant-garde structure, the Rokkasho facility looks like a military base. Access is typically afforded only to officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Here lie massive stockpiles of separated plutonium; Japan has the largest reserve of any non-nuclear-weapons state--enough to make hundreds or even thousands of nuclear bombs. If Tokyo moved to phase out nuclear energy without ending reprocessing or permanently burying all of its spent fuel, it would not only create a target for terrorists but also violate the country's international nonproliferation pledges. The fuel would have nowhere to go. (Tokyo is no closer to having a Yucca Mountain-type nuclear repository than Washington is.)
A nuclear phaseout would also jeopardize Japan's energy independence by forcing it to import more fuel. With virtually no domestic energy resources, Japan is already the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas, the second-largest importer of coal, and the third-largest net importer of oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Before March 2011, Japan was also the world's third-largest producer of nuclear power, after the U.S. and France. But with the shutdown of plants after the accident, Japan has been substituting with natural gas, low-sulfur crude oil, and fuel oil. "The reliance on the hydrocarbons makes Japan vulnerable from the energy-security perspective," says Hirohide Hirai, director of policy evaluation and public relations at the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry.
Rokkasho is ground zero for Japan's national security dilemma, but the economic dependencies are considerable, too. Locally, the facility has generated billions of yen in government subsidies and tax breaks. About 200 villagers are employed directly by the facility, while 60 to 70 percent of local workers--about 3,500 people--are employed by related businesses. "It has improved the standard of living of this local area," says Rokkasho Deputy Mayor Mamoru Toda, who has spent his entire career focused on the nuclear facility. "If we abolish all of the nuclear energy, can we still go on with the prosperity of this country?"
Perhaps not. The mostly idled nuclear fleet offers a taste of life without the atom: In summer 2012, the country faced electricity shortages, forcing the government to push citizens toward power-saving measures such as restrictions on big users and reduced air-conditioning. Productivity suffered as workers labored through sweltering heat. Just in Tokyo, electricity costs, already among the highest in the world, rose by an average of 8.5 percent. Eight of Japan's 10 power utilities reported heavy losses--$8.5 billion total over six months--from the cost of buying more oil and gas to replace idled reactors. The two profitable power companies had little or no generation from nuclear. All this from a temporary stoppage.
If Japan goes to zero nuclear power, as the protesters and former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda want, the resulting increase in fossil-fuel imports would cause an outflow of national wealth equivalent to 0.6 percent of Japan's gross domestic product, according to research completed in January by the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan. That would lead to an increase of Japan's enormous $74 billion trade deficit. "You have to pay a lot, a lot, a lot for LNG imports," Hirai says. "If something happens in the Strait of Hormuz today, that makes--oh, I don't want to think about it," he adds, shaking his head.
A nuclear phaseout would also lead to a rise in electricity prices, increasing the burden on households by $10 billion ($115 per household). Japanese businesses would suffer from hiked electricity costs, with an increased burden of $22 billion. The fallout could cost some 420,000 jobs, according to IEEJ. All of that, in turn, would lead to an approximately $11 billion annual decline in corporate tax revenue and what the institute refers to as a "vicious cycle," escalating the already massive debt problem faced by the world's third-largest economy. "We don't want to pursue such a miserable path," Hirai says.
GRAVITY'S PULL
Towering along the seashore in Japan's Shizuoka prefecture is a 60-foot-tall anti-tsunami seawall. The massive structure--one of many countermeasures that Chubu Electric Power has implemented at its Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station since the 2011 temblor--shows just how far, and high, Japan is willing to go to hold on to nuclear energy. Hamaoka was shut down immediately after Fukushima, because this region is due for an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or higher sometime in the next 30 years. Largely considered a ticking time bomb, the plant is probably the last place that should be confident about a restart of Japan's nuclear power. But Chubu has poured nearly $1.8 billion into anti-seismic and anti-flooding prophylactics to make Japan's most vulnerable nuclear plant ready to reopen--without any promise that such a day will ever come.
Like Japan, Chubu Electric has other energy-supply options, including thermal power stations and renewable-energy projects now under way. But for now, these can't cheaply make up the difference. Like Japan, Chubu has chosen to invest in its nuclear power station, despite the safety concerns. It's for the same reason that the United States allowed drilling in the Gulf of Mexico so soon after the BP oil spill. The same reason that safety concerns associated with hydraulic fracturing are not holding back the U.S. shale-gas boom. Faced with the choice between economic sustainability and the far-off promise of renewable energy, most countries are choosing, and will continue to choose, to protect their economy. It's a choice that Hiroko Sata, who grew up counting lightbulbs, would understand.
In January, Japan's new nuclear regulator released a draft of new safety measures, setting the stage in July for a nuclear restart, just a little more than two years after the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown.
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